Cloud Atlas – Reviews round-up

We like the ideas behind Cloud Atlas but how did five of the main publications rate it?

New York Times Cloud Atlas review

This is by no means the best movie of the year, but it may be the most movie you can get for the price of a single ticket. It blends farce, suspense, science fiction, melodrama and quite a bit more, not into an approximation of Mr. Mitchell’s graceful and virtuosic pastiche, but rather into an unruly grab bag of styles, effects and emotions held together, just barely, by a combination of outlandish daring and humble sincerity.

Los Angeles Times Cloud Atlas review

Finally, what sinks “Cloud Atlas” is not the largeness of its ambitions but the lack of skill it displays in terms of writing, directing and acting. Earthbound when it wants to be soaring, striving for a kind of profundity that is out of its grasp, this is simply not the film everyone hoped it would be.

San Francisco Chronicle Cloud Atlas review

Still, despite some weaknesses, a sense gradually emerges in this film- not just an idea, but a strong feeling mixed with an idea – about the dance of good and evil over time. It’s a grown-up person’s vision: When you’re young, it’s possible to believe that evil can be vanquished. As you get older, you realize that evil never stops changing shapes and faces.

The Washington Post Cloud Atlas review

At its best, though, “Cloud Atlas” represents just the kind of nerve and ingenuity that movies so desperately need these days. As a hymn to mutability — human and cinematic — “Cloud Atlas” reaches for the high notes and hits them often enough.

Entertainment Weekly Cloud Atlas review

I would never call Cloud Atlas profound — it’s more like a pulpy middlebrow head trip — but the hook of the movie is that Andy and Lana Wachowski and Tom Tykwer so clearly meant everything that they put in it.